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Robin joins DC's gallery of queer characters, comes out as bisexual
Robin, the longtime sidekick of Batman, was revealed as bisexual in the latest edition of the comic Batman: Urban Legends.
After spending decades in the closet, DC super-sidekick Robin has come out as queer. The latest edition of Batman: Urban Legends establishes Tim Drake's Robin as canonically bisexual.
Robin has long been Batman's partner and protege. The character was first created in 1940 by Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson, to appeal to younger readers. The mantle of Robin has been taken up over the years by Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne and Jason Todd. However, it was with Tim Drake that writer Meghan Fitzmartin decided to make the leap.
Taking to Twitter, Meghan wrote, “My goal in writing has been and will always be to show just how much God loves you. You are so incredibly loved and important and seen. Forever grateful to be trusted with Tim Drake and his story and honoured to work with the amazingly talented @BelenOrtega_ and @loquesunalex.”
In an interview to BBC, Meghan said that Robin's sexuality is a part of who he is as a person. “We were looking at what could we do with Tim and what stories do we want to tell with Tim. It's been a while since he's had his own story. I went back and I read a bunch of the comics that I grew up with and just really spent some time with that character to figure out what what stories did I want to tell and there were these pieces that kept coming together that felt that they didn't have context without this final piece of having him realise his own sexuality, that this is part of who he is as a person and as a character.”
About Batman's reaction to his sidekick coming out, Meghan believes he would be ‘totally cool' with it. “I think Batman is incredibly open. He's going to be very receptive of a Robin. Ultimately there is a lot of love that he has for Tim and that will shine through,” she said.
On the big screen, Robin has been played by actors such as Burt Ward, Chris O'Donnell and most recently, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. DC characters Batwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Midnighter and Apollo have all been written as LGBTQ+ before.
